How to make new employees feel welcome?
An Onboarding process is a natural progression from recruiting and hiring. Here are the top 10 ways to make new employees feel welcome…
When you are bringing new hires into the company, you want your other employees to know them and make the new hires feel welcomed and comfortable. An efficient onboarding program can provide the new hires a work environment that can help them be successful and also increase employee engagement in the company.
1. Buddy System
Before implementing the buddy system reach out to your team and find out the challenges they faced, and the resource they wished to have as new hires. Their feedback will be a great starting point in structuring a buddy system.
In a buddy system, you pair up a new hire with an employee(buddy) who has an experience minimum of 2 years and can guide and support the new hire in their initial few months. This buddy can be within a team or outside the team, providing the newbie a touchpoint of the company’s work culture and defining the expectations about behavior, procedures, goals early on in his work.
2. Make Proper Introduction
Now because of the remote work culture, it’s even more difficult to make the new employee feel welcomed. Remote new hires and remote employees don’t get the opportunity for bonding like the traditional times, where you can just walk up to someone introduce yourself, crack a joke, and have a good laugh about it.
To make the introduction process effective in the remote environment, you can create a Slack channel or use any video conferencing tool to introduce your employee and make the other employees aware that someone new has joined the company. Also, a general channel, where every employee can talk, joke, or educate anyone about anything apart from the work to bridge the long-distance gap of those coffee talks, and the water cooler effect.
3. Set them with small manageable task first
Don’t bombard them with all tasks in the first week itself, let them settle in first. Try to create a good first impression that can go a long way towards making the new hire feel comfortable.
Ask them about their previous job profile and their approach to the work. Understand their perspective and correct them where they are wrong. Give them tasks that are achievable and manageable on the first day as they don’t have the experience. Evaluate their task and give them your feedback about what can be improved, what you liked to make that they are aligned with the job.
4. Celebrate new employee’s wins
Strike a balance between new employee contributions and make them feel included. Focusing only on a few employees can make them think, either they are not making an impact on the company’s productivity or they don’t belong in the team.
Instead, start giving them small projects to gain their confidence. Encourage them to do better by celebrating their accomplishment and giving them the recognition they deserve.
5. Prepare your team
Including a new member in your team definitely changes the team dynamics. Prepare your team beforehand the new hire officially joins. Let them know about the new hire’s responsibilities, who he will be reporting to, what are the deadlines so that all of them work together and the new hire get a hang of the whole process.
6. Have your new hire meet other employees from other departments
This might seem not important, but doing so can help you promote cross-functional collaboration and a culture of continuous improvement. It helps in improving communication, allows everyone to challenge ideas with continuous learning and growth for individuals. This also makes the new hire comfortable to approach other department employees without any hesitation.
7. Don’t overwhelm new hires with paperwork
Too much paperwork on the first day itself can overwhelm the new employee. Don’t make them sign tons of documents on the first day itself. Keep the paperwork formality before the first day or after the first week. Try keeping one or two forms per day so that no one is burdened and the work is also done.
If possible let all the formalities shift to a digital platform. And with the need for the hour, this can in fact be the best option. This way, the new employee won’t feel buried in a stack of forms.
8. Provide new hire a warm welcome
For an added bit of “Welcome aboard!”, hide a small gift or a personalized note somewhere in their personal space. Dedicate a personal space exclusive for their use. Depending on your business, this personal space could be a desk, a workstation, or a cubicle.
Even when you are working remotely don’t forget to add a personal touch to your new employee’s onboarding experience. Rather than sending template emails to welcome new hires, customize their emails. Have your employee welcome them as well via chat or video.
9.Explain the new employee about the team’s workflow
Ensure your manager or team leader approach the new employee with empathy and appreciate the feeling that the new employee isn’t much aware of what the team does and how it functions.
Share the team’s current roadmap or strategy to give the new hire an understanding of what the team does and their priorities at the moment. Let the new hire know about the required software and functionalities used by the team so that they can install it beforehand and get familiar with it. Explain to them the communication hierarchy and the way of reporting their task, should they report to a particular employee or a team leader, should they drop in a message or stop by their desk.
These tips will make a new hire feel comfortable and less intimidated about navigating and working in a new environment
10. Get new employee’s feedback
Finally, feedback is key to designing an efficient onboarding experience for your new hires. Keep formal, informal, or one-to-one feedbacks and check-in surveys at 30, 60, and 90 days, for new hires to let you know how their experience is going.
Keep multiple channels open for receiving feedback (anonymously, in person, online, etc.) so that they can choose the most comfortable way to share their thoughts. With their experience and feedback, you can work to improve your onboarding process for future new hires.
Once onboarded the new hires should feel that they have made the right decision of joining your company and this can be done only with a proper onboarding process. A proper onboarding process can really make an employee feel like they’ve found a home at your company which will help in the long-term success of the company.
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